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many of her now alienated children may go in and at least find education, that our Church should lightly abandon it, and throw away this happiest opportunity that has of late years been offered to her of exercising her noblest functions wisely and well?
Extent of Dissent.2. Secondly, I call attention to the extent and strength of Dissent at this moment in England, and suggest the policy of counteracting it, not by forcible resistance, but by conciliation, and by disarming it of every reasonable ground of complaint against us. In this point of view the question raised by the Conscience Clause is not, indeed, a question of theological conflict with Dissenters, but it does raise unavoidably the question. Is not non-conformity arrived at proportions among us which place the matter in a very practical light indeed? I do not, of course, venture to rely on the only statistics that we possess—those of Mr. Mann. But bating considerably from these, putting the maximum of Protestant Dissenters at one-fourth, and assigning one-twelfth of the population to Roman Catholics and Jews—all of these probably most moderate computations—although the total which they reach is that of one-third of the population alien to the National Church (and there is reason to fear that the Nonconformist element is far larger[1]), I ask, is it a time, is it a situation, to stand out for exclusive recognition, or even ecclesiastical primacy, not only as the appointed way of salvation,
- ↑ The basis of Mr. Mann's Religious Census is the provision of each denomination for religious worship. This, as has been often pointed out, may be easily fallacious as to the actual numbers of the denomination in question, especially in the case of the Established Church, which may fairly be credited (whether to her praise or otherwise I will not say) with all who claim no other spiritual provision. But the fact is significant that "in the whole of England and Wales, for every 100 sittings provided by the Church of England, Dissenters furnish 93!" (Mr. Mann's Report, p. 75.)
